This seems pretty pathetic to me. Under the guise of an enquiry about “scholarly erasure” forsooth, to which we are all subject, Van Sickle (BMCR 00.10.19)1 claims that David Meban’s (obviously excellent) review of my intertextual Virgil Kleine Schriften (Reading Virgil and his Texts, Michigan 1999) failed to note my erasing of him (Van Sickle) by failing to refer to the abstract of a talk he apparently gave a quarter of a century ago at the 1976 APA in New York City, published, qua abstract, in LCM 2 (1977) 107-8, a document “now” on the Web, at [ http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/jvsickle/bb6midst.htm ]. In the chapter of my book in question, “Voice, Poetics, and Virgil’s Sixth Eclogue” (orig. article 1998) I had discussed inter al. the possibility that the “errors” in mythology, etc. in Ecl. 6 might be attributable to the fact that the narrator is “Tityrus” (who doesn’t know epic and drama, the sites of his “errors”) rather than Virgil, or even “Virgil”, and had suggested, inter al., that editions of the poem should acknowledge (as none has) that the primary narrator (unlike that of Ecl. 4 and 10, e.g.) needs to be identified with someone other than Virgil. I strongly urge all BMCR readers to buy my book immediately (it can be ordered at: [ http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=reading+virgil ]), read my chapter, and then go on line and decide whether I should have referred to Van Sickle’s 1976 APA abstract.
Notes
1. BMCR neglected to identify the author fully: John Van Sickle, Department of Classics, Brooklyn College.